Thursday, August 6, 2015

Enenews and the Webcam Discussion Forums

The webcam discussion forums provide the only public online
forum I’m aware of for discussing plant conditions at Fukushima Daiichi.

Webcam watchers have been observing the cams and documenting
their observations on the Fukushima webcam discussion forums for over 4 years.

They have also been posting screenshots and video that
illustrate their descriptive accounts.

Their comments and supporting documentary screenshots and
videos have chronicled ongoing atmospheric conditions at Daiichi and have linked
observations with data and events reported by TEPCO and the media.

When the main webcam discussion forum was disrupted, webcam
watchers selected another forum for their documentation.

Now that forum is also disrupted and will not allow comments
to be posted. This disruption occurred after what is widely believed by webcam
watchers to be a denial of service attack that occurred Sunday August 3.

Was the disruption of the webcam watchers’ documentation
deliberate or is the Enenews site simply too unwieldy after 4 years of
accumulating comments?

I don’t know the answer to this question but in my time
advocating on behalf of Fukushima victims, I have seen quite a bit of
subterfuge and outright censorship of comments on other websites, particularly
mainstream news sites.

Plant conditions haven’t looked good all summer and TEPCO is
now reportedly grappling with unit 3, trying to remove heavy equipment that
fell into unit 3’s pool, a pool that it is hard to believe has much left intact
within it after the explosion that rocked that unit in March 2011.

Is it coincidence that the webcam discussion forum is down,
or not?

I don’t know the answer to this question but if the answer
is “no coincidence” then I expect there is a reason and that reason is that ‘the
powers that be’ no longer will tolerate free discussion and dissemination of
webcam watchers’ observations.